Wednesday, 17 March 2010

?=AN AFTERNOON AT DE APPEL~$

There's art that consists of objects that are nice to look at and which are made mainly for aesthetic purposes, but you also have pieces of art that are part of a certain message and the way the works of art are exhibited as a whole becomes more important. These exhibitions sometimes consist of objects that don't feel like art objects, because they lack a certain artistic/aesthetic beauty and you kind of just feel the artist tries to outsmart you or something. I bet there are exhibitions as well which combine both, thus convey a strong message with objects that also feel like true pieces of art. Today, however, I went to De Appel which is a small art space currently situated in a former boys' school in Amsterdam. And here they had one of those exhibitions of which the pieces of art work together as a whole and are all part of a certain message or idea which forms a red line that holds together one piece to the other. There were no nice paintings involved or interesting installations, only one object somewhere near the end was real cool to look at. But there was also the usual empty cardboard box found on the street and then put on the floor and hey, we're in the museum, so yes, it's art! This is a good example of how an exhibition like this is less art in the sense of painting, beautiful sculptures etc. etc. but more a way to convey messages visually by having made certain objects or by putting photographs together, that kind of thing. There was also a pound of strawberries, but all of the strawberries were photographed separately to show that every strawberry is different from the other and yet combined they can all make for the same weight, one pound. Pretty interesting, but it's not what I wanted today. I hoped for some really nice art installations, colour, just pretty pieces you know, like things I'd seen last Saturday, but unfortunately no. Glad I have this museum card, though, that allows me to go to a lot of museums for free including this one. Imagine if I had to pay 7 euros for this, it would have felt like a loss!

These pictures come straight from De Appel's website, so credit goes to whoever shot them that isn't me.